About Damn Time
by Kimmychu
Summary: Sometimes … it takes a woman to do the job. DannyFlack, DannyAiden friendship!


**About Damn Time**

Fandom: CSI:NY

Author: Kimmychu

Rating: FRT

Pairing: Danny/Flack

Content Warning: Nah. Except maybe for childish pranks. And Aiden fans may get I-miss-Aiden pangs.

Spoilers: Nada.

Summary: Sometimes … it takes a woman to do the job. Danny/Flack.

Disclaimer: They all belong to me. Mine, MINE, I tell you! Hahahahah … hah. Okay, they're not mine. Meanie.

**( Oooo …... oooO )**

Author's Notes: This was done for a Story Request thing I've got going on at my CSI:NY live journal. A fellow Danny/Flack fan requested for a fluffy story that included Aiden, and some specific details she wanted. I hope she likes it, and I hope you enjoy it too. Thanks for all the nice reviews and support!

**( Oooo …... oooO )**

"So … how do you guys walk with them dangly things between yer legs?"

Tea literally shot out of Danny's nose at Aiden's nonchalant question.

Flack didn't hear it, so engrossed as he was in his lunch of Chinese fried noodles. He was blissfully oblivious to Danny coughing and spluttering next to him, his handsome face hidden by the bowl he held, devouring his meal as if it was his last.

Aiden propped her chin on her hand, smirking at her fellow CSI. It was okay that Flack hadn't heard her inquiry. Danny was the one she wanted to tease anyway. Teasing Danny was her favorite pastime in the universe.

Especially if she got to do it in public.

And a certain homicide detective with beautiful, blue eyes and a hot butt was there with them too.

After all, a good teasing where Danny was concerned simply wouldn't be complete without the guy's _secret crush _present to be part of every embarrassing moment.

"_What?!_" Danny's blue eyes were wide with mortification.

"I _said_, how do you guys _walk_ with a _dick_ and _balls_ between yer legs? Do you guys wear tight underwear to keep them from hangin' low or somethin'? Or do ya actually like leavin' them hangin' around and, I dunno, _slappin'_ against yer legs?"

Danny stared at her like she'd gone completely nuts.

A few customers who sat close to them in the crowded Chinese restaurant turned their heads to glance in amused curiosity at her.

Flack was _still _stuffing his face with food.

"C'mon! I wanna know!" Aiden said with a playful smack to Danny's shoulder.

When the aghast CSI continued to stare at her with a gaping mouth, she turned to the other man in her company and said, "Flack!"

Flack's head rose up as he straightened in his seat, his cheeks round and ballooned like a chipmunk's. A string of noodle drooped from his puckered lips. "Hnnh? Vhat?"

"How do you guys walk 'round with a dick and balls between yer legs?"

To his credit, the homicide detective didn't even bat an eyelid.

The noodle abruptly disappeared as Flack sucked it into his already full mouth. He chewed on his food, meditating on the question with a slight frown. After a minute, he swallowed, and then replied with a shrug, "I dunno. I just do it. I mean, I was _born_ with them. And I like 'em _free_ and _well_ _ventilated_, thank you very much."

Aiden sniggered, her brown eyes crinkled in amusement.

Danny, who had apparently gotten over his astonishment, snickered under his breath. He wouldn't look at Flack, and his face was somewhat flushed.

She smiled inwardly. Ohh, she had a rather good idea what her best friend was imagining in his head right now, the little pervert.

"How do _you_ walk 'round _without_ a dick and balls, huh, Burn?" Flack placed his empty bowl on the cloth-covered table top. "Ya know, doesn't it feel kinda _drafty_ down there all the time?" He made a waving motion in the air with his hand, pointing it downwards in the direction of his groin.

Aiden wrinkled her nose at the homicide detective. The fact that Flack was saying what he was in all seriousness deflated some of her fun. _Nothing_ could ever faze the guy. Not even that blunt question of hers about gay anal sex and his opinion of it.

She had to admit, though, Flack's answer to _that_ question was _very_ intriguing.

"_Daaaaaaaanny_, c'mon, enlighten me."

Danny lifted his hands up in a defensive manner, a tiny smile curving up the ends of his lips. "I'm not joinin' this conversation."

"_Chiiiiiiiiiickeeeeeeen_ -"

Just as she predicted, Danny reared up and was instantly ready for a friendly round of verbal tussle.

"Hey, _heeeeey_, I'm a _gentleman_, a'right? Unlike _some_ people whose mommies never taught them _manners_, _I_ know better than to talk 'bout _genitals_ in a restaurant where people are _eatin'_ -"

"Danny's the _perfect_ guy to tell ya, Aid."

Aiden glanced at Flack, and then grinned widely. Oh _yeah_, that sweet, sweet glint of snark was bright in the homicide detective's large eyes.

"_Yeah? _Why's that, Flack?"

"Danny here?" Flack said, straight-faced, angling his head at the blue-eyed CSI. "The way he's _swaggerin'_ 'round like a _duck_, he'll not only teach ya how to walk with a package 'tween yer legs, he'll teach ya how to walk with extra _cushion_ in the _back_ too."

Aiden cackled in merriment, smacking one palm on the table top.

"I do _NOT_ swagger like a _DUCK!_" Danny yelled in indignation.

Her laughter escalated in volume the instant it dawned on her Danny didn't protest at all Flack obliquely commenting that he had a _big butt_.

"You _so_ do!" Flack rejoined, smirking like an imp. "You swagger so much, you could fit the _Grand Canyon _between yer legs."

Aiden's mouth went into an 'O' shape, and she released a hilarious noise. _Ouch_, talk about a low blow!

Danny appeared stuck between wanting to laugh his head off and strangulating the smug homicide detective with his bare hands.

"You're. So. _Dead_." Uh oh, Danny had that insane super villain gleam in his wide eyes, and he was doing the agitated lip licking too.

Wait, the lip licking thing didn't count.

Danny always did that more whenever Flack was around, as far as she'd noticed anyhow.

"Hey, that was s'pposed to be a _compliment_, Messer. Not a lotta guys can do total _splits_, ya know."

"I'm _gonna_ -" Danny's hands were already lunging for Flack's long neck.

Flack executed a flawless evasive maneuver by sliding off his chair and standing on the side that put the chair between him and the outraged CSI. He was, however, within Aiden's reach, and she took the opportunity to slap him on the arm, chuckling in good humor.

"Oh, look at the time, I hafta go back to my precinct pronto." Flack was still very much in a mischievous mood.

"I'm gonna _get_ ya, Flack, just you _wait_." Danny had his arms crossed over his chest, the short-sleeved, black top he wore accentuating the musculature of his arms and shoulders. With his lowered brows, narrow-eyed glare and all, he would have appeared genuinely threatening. That is, if it wasn't for the telltale twitching of his pursed lips.

Flack kept pretending that he didn't hear a word of what Danny muttered.

"Gee, it's _my_ turn to foot the bill, isn't it? Off I go, then."

Flack scurried off to the counter, far away from Danny's skilled, lethal hands and out of earshot. Although the guy's back was facing them, Aiden could totally tell the lanky detective was grinning like a loon.

So was Danny.

She surreptitiously watched her friend watching Flack, noting the warmth in those blue eyes, the curl of those lips in a rare, openly affectionate smile. The utter intensity with which Danny stared at Flack, as if the man was all that existed in the universe.

Aiden smiled softly. She knew what it was like to be the recipient of the Messer _I-think-you're-hot_ gaze. In the first year they worked together and beyond, he had been less than subtle about letting her know what he thought about her. He'd never overtly asked her out on a date though, and it had taken some time for her to receive the insight that, while he did like her, it seemed like Danny's heart was mostly … elsewhere.

And a mere two months ago, during a case she was working on with Danny and Flack, she figured out at last exactly where it had gone.

Or more to the point, _who_ had stolen Danny's heart so deeply and wholly.

"Ooo, _somebody's_ got it _baaaaad_," Aiden said in a singsong fashion.

Danny's attractive visage immediately went red, and he asked in a small, boyish voice, "What are ya talkin' 'bout?"

Aiden puckered her lips in an exaggerated kissy expression, fluttering her eyelashes in a humorous way. "_I'm gonna get ya, Flack, just you wait_."

Danny's blush darkened. It spread all the way down his neck. He avoided looking at her, staring at his used plate instead. "Shaddup, Aid. I didn't mean it like that."

"Uh _huh_," Aiden replied in skepticism, one eyebrow raised at the embarrassed smile he wasn't concealing very well. "_C'mon_, Danny, just _tell him_."

"Oh, _'course _it's easy for ya, _you're _not the one who's in lo-" Danny stopped short, falling silent and suddenly studying the nails of his right hand with profound concentration.

Aiden scrutinized her friend with tender eyes. Damn! She had been _that_ close to hearing Danny admit that he loved Flack. Maybe if the knucklehead stopped being so frightened of his own feelings, he might actually see for himself that the homicide detective felt the same way about him too.

At least, she was almost a hundred percent certain Flack was crazy about Danny. Hell, she never knew any other guy who stared at Danny as much as Flack did, and with such blatancy too. It was mind-boggling how two guys who were so clearly head over heels for each other could be so _blind_.

"Sooner or later, ya gotta tell him, Danny." She slowly reached under the table for the man's left hand that was on his thigh. She smiled at him when he grasped her hand in return. "Ya can't go on like this _forever_. What are ya gonna do when he gets a _girlfriend_ or somethin', huh?"

Danny shrugged. "I dunno." He didn't need to say more. His eyes said everything else.

"So, ya gotta _tell him_."

"It's not that _simple_." Danny took off his glasses and rubbed at one eye, letting out a heavy sigh. "It's not like I can just go up to him and tell him I'm goin' fuckin' _crazy_ over him. He's … he's _blue blood_, for one." He put his silver-framed spectacles back on.

"And yer point _is?_" Aiden felt like whacking him on his thick head. Many times.

"I'm the opposite a' everythin' he is. And like ya said …" Danny sighed again. "_Girlfriend_."

"Danny. _You've_ had girlfriends yerself." Aiden gesticulated with her hands. "Are ya catchin' my _drift _here?"

Danny chuckled mildly. "I know, but -"

"Bill's paid. Ya guys still wanna stick 'round or what? I really gotta go back to my precinct soon."

Flack was back at their table, an inquisitive expression on his features. He was staring at Danny in particular.

"We oughta get back to the labs. Got lotsa evidence to process for the Matheson case." Danny was gazing in her direction, an odd emotion in his blue eyes. He looked … torn.

It took Aiden a moment or two to figure out Danny was deliberately evading eye contact with Flack. And Flack knew it too. If the homicide detective's eyes were like lasers, Danny would probably have two holes going through his skull by now.

She decided to put Danny out of his misery.

"Yeah, we gotta get back to work too. Mac'll have our heads if we're late," Aiden said, sticking her tongue out and displaying her real feelings on the issue.

"A'right then." Flack seemed to wait for some response from Danny. When Danny didn't say anything and simply took a quick glance at him before looking away at something else, Flack added quietly, "Guess I'll talk with you guys later."

Aiden shook her head at Flack's worried look aimed at her, a silent motion to reassure the man nothing major was up. They were close enough friends for Flack to understand her move, that she would speak with him later about things, like they always did.

"See ya later, Flack."

The homicide detective sent one last pointed, baffled gaze Danny's way. Then, with visible reluctance, Flack sauntered away and out of the restaurant.

Danny was very quiet, staring into space, lost in his thoughts. His lips were downturned in a forlorn frown. Aiden mentally hammered herself on the head upon reflecting back on their earlier conversation.

_Great going, Burn, dredge up Danny's worst fear when he needed the opposite, why don'tcha?_

She silently agreed with her brain that it'd been a stupid blurb.

"C'mon, buddy. Let's go, huh?"

As they exited the restaurant, got into their car and headed back to CSI headquarters, a plan began to form within Aiden's mind, a silly but uncomplicated plan that _just_ might work. She couldn't help smiling to herself while she text messaged Flack via her mobile phone.

Danny was wrong.

It _was_ that simple.

And she was going to prove it even if it meant Danny throttling her to death before the day was over.

**Oooo …... oooO**

Danny was staring at something past the transparent walls of the laboratory, his face mere centimeters away from the glass. He was virtually plastered against it too, his hands flat on the smooth surface.

Aiden crept towards him on tiptoes from behind. What the heck was the guy looking at?

Her eyebrows lifted more and more up her forehead the closer she got to Danny. There were just inches apart now, and he was absolutely unaware she was even there. She considered poking him in the side, then retracted the idea. Nah, she'd take a look at whatever was enthralling her friend so much first.

She gazed over Danny's left shoulder.

It was Flack.

Whoa. The man had gotten a haircut, and _damn_, did he look _fine_. Flack must have had it done immediately after their lunch.

The homicide detective was standing in the hallway with Mac. They were discussing something, and from the open folder Mac had in hand, it was most likely a case they were currently investigating along with Stella. She and Danny were working with Hawkes this time around.

She grinned broadly.

It couldn't have been more perfect. Flack's new hairdo combined with that black, leather jacket of his ought to keep Danny's brain preoccupied for the whole afternoon, which meant the chances of her being caught doing what she was going to do later was much more slim. Of course, there was still the question of which laboratory with glass walls she could use for her nefarious plot. She had to ensure only Flack and Danny got to see her … masterpiece. Who knew what Mac would punish her with if he were to see it. She wasn't too keen on doing paperwork for the next five years or ten.

Aiden peered at what she could see of Danny's face from her vantage point. As expected, the blue-eyed CSI had that little, cute smile brightening his mien whenever Flack was close by. He looked like he was about to explode into a fit of giggles like a high school girl, or start hopping around like the Easter bunny. She smiled to herself.

Man, did Danny have it bad or _what_.

She drummed her fingers against her thighs, nibbling her lower lip. Stared at the back of Danny's head. His face was so close to the glass. And that _forehead_ …

A wicked smile spread across her face.

Just _one_ push …

She restrained herself. For about two pathetic seconds.

Her right hand darted up and forwards.

_THUNK!_

Danny's high forehead smacked against the glass with a sound loud enough to make heads spin in their direction, including those belonging to Mac and Flack. If the noise didn't do it, Danny's howl of pain sure did.

"_Oooowwwwwwww!_" Danny's face was screwed up in a wince. He rubbed the bruised skin of his forehead with his palm. "What the _hell_ -"

Not waiting for Danny to open his eyes and see her, Aiden rushed back to her spot in front of the computer nearby, seated herself down on the seat in a hurry and attempted to appear innocent. Right on cue, a lab technician in a white coat walked into the room, searching for something in the shelf next to where Aiden sat.

"_BURN!_"

Whoops, Danny was _pissed_.

"Yeah?" She looked Danny in the eye, pokerfaced and calm. Heh, Flack wasn't the only one who could act good.

Danny was still rubbing at his forehead, glowering at her with squinty eyes. "That _hurt!_"

"I didn't do it." Using her forefinger, Aiden pointed at the lab technician beside her. "_He_ did."

The technician glanced at them and let out a very bewildered, "Huh?"

At Danny's incensed growl and continued patting of his aching forehead, the guy quickly got the gist of what might have transpired earlier. He went ramrod straight and started shaking his head violently in negative, waving his hands in a pleading manner.

"_Aiden!_" Danny's eyes became even more narrowed.

"_Whaaaaaaat? _It's _truuuue_ -"

A very familiar cough at the laboratory door cut her words short.

Mac was standing in the doorway, an eyebrow raised in mild amusement. His hazel eyes did all the smiling for him. Flack was behind him, the lower part of his fine-looking face contorting in an endeavor to not laugh.

The lab technician whom Aiden had accused of the crime he didn't commit breathed a sigh of intense relief upon seeing Mac, and scampered out the room like a bat out of hell. Aiden had forgotten how notorious Danny's fiery temperament and man-from-the-streets reputation were. She made a mental note to apologize to the guy later on.

"Aiden, Danny," Mac said, eyeing them both like a reprimanding father of two naughty children. "Glass walls were not made to be _playthings_." He gave Aiden a meaningful look.

Aiden chose to maintain her straight face, although she sneaked in a swift, impish grin at Flack when Mac shifted his gaze to Danny.

"Neither were they made for _ogling_ people." Mac gave Danny a pointed look as well.

Danny's face became flushed.

Flack snickered.

Aiden's eyebrows had to be somewhere in her hairline.

_Ogle? _Did Mac actually _say_ that?

She stared at her boss. No way. Had Mac finally noticed all the staring and eye fucking going on between Danny and Flack? _Mac? _Mr. Straight-As-A-Railroad-Spike? _No way_.

"Danny." Mac passed Danny a whole pile of brown folders filled with paper. "I'd like these done before tomorrow."

"Aww, _maaan_." The bespectacled man didn't make an effort to hide his pout. "Thought I was gonna have a free night for once."

One side of Mac's lips curved up in a small smirk. "Whatever plans you've made will have to wait another day."

Danny huffed. He looked pretty cute when he sulked.

Aiden was all deadpan on the outside, but inside, she was grinning like mad and making whooping noises. _Yes! _Somebody up there _really_ liked her today. Danny being stuck in the labs late into the night fitted like a dream with her plan. Now she didn't need to worry as much about Mac or Stella or the others catching her in the act or stumbling upon her upcoming creation and erasing it too soon or something.

"Like the new haircut, Flack," Aiden said, after Mac had left the lab. She winked at the homicide detective.

"Thank you." Flack brushed a hand through his freshly shorn, dark hair, smiling. "If I had Danny's boots, I'd be all set." Flack glanced at Danny as he said so.

Danny seemed to not have heard Flack's remark. Instead, he was unashamedly staring at Flack, his eyes wide and gleaming, the folders he grasped positioned with such convenience in front of his groin. Aiden counted a precise twenty-seven seconds before Danny jolted out of his reverie, turned a mighty dark shade of red and broke eye contact with Flack.

"I, _uh_ … I gotta do the paperwork for Mac now. _Yeah_. Paperwork, okay," Danny mumbled, eyes flitting here and there nervously.

After one last fleeting, warm glance at Flack, Danny dashed out of the lab, almost running into a chair and tripping flat onto his face. Aiden shook her head in fondness while she watched her best friend make his escape. He could be such a clumsy klutz sometimes.

"So, Burn, what's this 'bout comin' back to the labs later this evenin'?" Flack gently nudged her chair with one foot.

"Just come back 'round the time I messaged ya earlier, 'kay?"

Flack's thick eyebrows lowered in suspicion. "What's goin' on, Aid? Hnn?"

"_Nothin'_, a'right? Just come back later. I promise it's nothin'." She sent him a smile that exposed both rows of pearly teeth.

The homicide detective studied her face with tapered eyes a little while more, then smirked and said, "_Fiiiiiine_. But if it turns out to be some _joke_ on me, you're gonna go home missin' a couple a' things, if ya know what I mean." He waggled his eyebrows.

"Ooo, I'm so _scared_, Flack. I'm _tremblin'_ in my panties now."

Flack tried to flick the tip of her nose with his fingers, and when she veered back, he laughed.

Aiden laughed along with him, smacking his hand away as he made a second attempt.

She couldn't wait for tonight to come around.

Tonight, two of her best friends were going to walk out of this building very different men. And hopefully, if she was right and things went the way she planned … those two men were going to walk out as one.

**Oooo …... oooO**

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! _Shhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!_"

Oh, man. Danny was freaking out _big time_.

Aiden couldn't blame him. She would have lost her cool too, if somebody had doodled a giant-ass heart on a lab's glass wall with her name and Flack's in it, and included pornographic drawings of them together.

She giggled quietly. Well, okay, at least _one_ of them wasn't pornographic. A doodle of Danny and Flack holding hands was much more on the adorable side.

Aiden watched the brown-haired detective running around in the corridor like a mouse desperately seeking a way out of a maze. She was hiding behind the door of a laboratory one door down that didn't have glass walls, peeking through a two-inch wide gap. She felt a little guilty for causing Danny such distress. On the other hand, she also felt like laughing like a nutball till she was rolling on the floor. This was the first time she'd ever seen Danny losing it to such an extreme, as much a drama queen as he was. It was hilarious.

Damnit, she _knew_ she should have brought her video camera to tape the historic occasion.

"Oh _shit_, where's the eraser, where's the stupid _eraser?!_" Danny had gone inside the lab, and was yanking out table drawers like a madman to find that elusive marker eraser that would end his suffering.

Aiden juggled the rectangular, pink-colored object between her hands.

_Heheheheh_, she thought, _sorry, Dannyboy, but this is how it's gotta be_.

She took a glance at her watch.

Yes, Flack was about to show up _anytime_ now -

"Aiden? Are ya there?"

Aiden pumped her arm in a victorious fervor. Right on time!

"Aiden?"

She peered outside through the gap in the door once more, seeing Flack striding down the hallway, nearing the glass lab where her artistic magnum opus was up in all its glory. Inside the laboratory, Danny had discovered another black marker pen in one of the drawers. He uncapped it, and hastened to the glass wall.

_Ohh, very smart, Messer, gonna scribble out the doodles, huh?_

Aiden snickered. Nope, Danny was too late. Flack was a mere dozen feet away by now. There wasn't a chance in hell Danny was going to succeed in drawing over _every_ doodle there.

She cautiously pulled back her lab door the tiniest bit to better see what was about to take place.

_That's right, Flack, just a few more steps …_

"_Aiden! _Hey, _c'mon_, I came here just like ya asked an-"

The homicide detective's steps slowed to a standstill.

Flack faltered into silence, his eyes wide as saucers as he stared at the gigantic mass of doodles on the glass wall before him. His gaze was promptly lured to the words in the humongous heart she'd sketched out.

" … 'Danny loves Don' … _wha?_"

Flack approached the wall with tentative steps.

" … 'I think your eyes are so pretty.'" Flack squinted his eyes in order to read the other sentences surrounding the big heart. "'I wanna kiss you all day long.' … 'Feel you all over me, like -'" He made a weird face. "'A piece of _pie?_'"

Aiden bit her lower lip. Huh, perhaps she shouldn't have written some of that, but hey, Danny _did_ say those things about Flack to her in person. While he was drunk out of his mind.

She snorted. It was the guy's own fault for sounding like a total lovesick doofus.

Her gaze shifted from Flack to Danny, who was still inside the lab.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, blocking the gasp that threatened to come out. Oh, _dang_. Danny was kneeling on the floor on the other side of the wall, next to the lab door, scrawling lines upon lines over one of the pornographic drawings at the bottom left corner. He was so occupied with his task, he had no idea Flack was already there gawking at the whole marker fiasco.

Wait.

Danny had a marker in his hand.

And Flack was right there.

And Flack was going to practically _catch Danny red-handed with it_.

Aiden sniggered until her sides hurt.

Ohh, this was _way_. Too. _Good_.

Flack began shuffling sideways while he continued to study Aiden's artistic work, thick eyebrows shooting up at some of the more explicit drawings. He halted before one that depicted a cartoon version of himself and Danny doing the dirty deed doggy style. The homicide detective stared at it for so long, Aiden had to wonder if she'd drawn them that badly … or if Flack was seriously imagining doing that sexual act with the CSI who'd just finished obscuring one perverted doodle.

Danny scrambled to his feet.

Flack was now standing before the wall next to the laboratory door.

Right in front of Danny.

Aiden held her breath.

The two detectives faced each other, a thin transparent wall all that was between them. Danny's eyes were as wide and round as Flack's. The marker in the CSI's right fist was in plain sight.

The minute Danny realized Flack was really there in the flesh, all the color rushed away from his face, leaving him wan with fright.

A couple of deathly hushed seconds ticked by.

Flack glanced downwards at the black marker in Danny's hand.

Danny did the same, then looked up at Flack.

Little by little, comprehension dawned on the shorter, blue-eyed detective. As if in slow motion, Danny's lower jaw sagged. His eyes grew even wider.

Another second of utter stillness passed.

Then, Danny burst into frenetic motion.

"No! _Nonononono_, you got it all wrong!"

In a split second, Danny was in front of Flack, wildly gesturing with his hands and shaking his head from side to side in a panic. The marker was still in his clutch.

"_No_, I - I didn't draw any a' this! _Honest_, Don, _I didn't!_"

Flack's visage was expressionless.

"Don, you gotta _believe_ me," Danny implored with a husky voice. He pointed at the doodles on the glass wall. "I did _not_ draw _any_ a' that!"

When Flack didn't reply, Danny rambled on, "I dunno how it got there … I was - _I dunno_, I was workin' in the break room the _whole_ time, and - and … _Aiden_. She's the only one who - Oh crap, _she_ must have done it. I'm gonna _kill _'er, _I'm gonna _-"

"So none of it is true?"

Danny was stunned silly by Flack's low-key question.

" … I …"

"None of it is true?"

Aiden had never seen Flack's face so _blank_ before. Her hand clenched into a fist.

"C'mon, Danny, _tell him the truth_." Her whisper sounded deafening in her own ears.

"I …" Danny turned his head away from Flack, behaving in a very agitated manner, like he yearned to run as far away as he could.

Behind her door, Aiden stomped her foot, just hard enough to make her feel better, but soft enough that it didn't create a noise audible to be heard outside the room.

"_Damnit_, Messer, look him in the eye and _tell him!_"

Oh great, now she was talking to herself like it was the most normal thing in the world. She made a face. Geez, the things she did for love.

Flack was motionless like a rock, never once tearing his gaze away from Danny. His mien was as deadpan as ever.

Danny fidgeted in silence for a minute more.

After another minute that lasted a lifetime, the CSI's shoulders suddenly slumped. Danny bowed his head. His blue eyes were squeezed shut.

"No."

The temper within Aiden flared to extreme proportions. Why, that _stupid little shi_-

"It's all _true_. _Every bit of it_." Danny had raised his head and was staring Flack straight in the eye. He looked terrified out of his wits and so brave at the same time. "Even the stupid part 'bout the stupid _pie_."

The homicide detective remained pokerfaced and silent.

"And … and _those_." Danny blushed a deep crimson, waving a hand at the very graphic doodles on the glass wall.

Flack still didn't respond in any way.

Danny was getting spooked by Flack's lack of reaction.

"Look, if ya wanna _hit_ me, just do it now and get it over and _done_ with, a'right?" Danny flexed his shoulders and spread his arms at his sides, leaving his torso exposed. "Yeah, I'm fuckin' _crazy_ 'bout you, _okay? _You're freakin' _gorgeous_ to me, and I wanna do _all_ those things that are on that wall with ya, _over and over _-"

Flack's large eyes blazed.

Aiden sucked in a breath between her teeth.

Danny stiffened, eyelids fluttering in apprehensive anticipation of the punch that was about to fly at his face.

Flack's big hands made a grab for Danny's shoulders.

The black marker fell from the shorter detective's hand.

This time, Aiden couldn't stop the harsh gasp escaping her lips.

Oh. _Wow_.

_Flack was kissing Danny!_

She bounced on her feet and hooted with glee, grinning so broadly her smile had to be as big as half her entire face.

"You little … _brat_." Flack sounded a little breathless. "Made me _wait_ … so _fuckin' long_."

"You weren't … the _only_ one … waitin'." Danny's fingers were entwined in Flack's dark hair, his words muffled by Flack's lips planting butterfly kisses all over his.

Aiden was awe-struck by how hot the two men looked as they kissed each other, molded against one another, from chest to thigh. Flack's hands sliding beneath Danny's black shirt while Danny had his arms wrapped around the homicide detective's shoulders. More kisses along a firm jaw line. A low groan. A shiver. Soft panting.

"Pack up. Then get yer ass down to the car park," Flack murmured after many minutes of caresses and gentle kisses. "Ya got _five minutes_."

Danny dragged the homicide detective's head down for another kiss, then made a fast retreat down the hallway to the break room, vanishing out of Aiden's sight.

She was chewing on her lower lip again. Watched Flack standing where he was, slowly scanning his surroundings, hunting for something.

Did he know she was there?

Aiden hid behind the door when she thought Flack was gazing in her direction. She held her breath, waiting for the indicative noise of advancing footsteps.

Ten seconds passed.

There was no sound.

Aiden lingered behind the lab door for a little while more. For all she knew, the guy could be right there next to the door, ready to pounce on her.

She decided to take the risk of showing herself.

Slinked to the edge of the door and peeked out.

There was no one in the corridor. It was really quiet, the kind of quiet that reigned when there wasn't another soul in sight or hearing.

Huh. Flack was gone.

Aiden opened the door and stepped out into the empty hallway.

Yep, she was on her own.

"Girl, ya did it again," Aiden said to herself in a satisfied tone. She was smiling even as she ambled towards the laboratory where her artistic labor of love was put on show. _Man_, it felt good to have a plan go far ahead of her expectations!

She did a double take at the sight of a short message scrawled onto the glass door of the lab.

Oh _hoh_, so Flack _did_ know she was there.

She neared the door to read what Flack had left for her:

_Aid,_

_Your check's in the mail._

The huge, ear-to-ear smile on her lips was clear as day long after she removed the marker doodles and got on the train home.

In fact, the smile stayed on as she prepared for sleep.

And just as she closed her eyes, she wondered how Flack and Danny would feel about receiving an enormous photo print of her marker tour de force for their first anniversary.

**Fin.**


End file.
